[Adium-devl] Show Offline Contacts should not be the default

[Colin Barrett]

On Aug 17, 2007, at 1:59 PM, Evan Schoenberg wrote:

> I remember distinctly the reason I acted on #1665 the way I did -- my
> mother had just started using Adium, and I'd explained the concept of
> status to her... and it was very counterintuitive to her that, if
> Adium can be told to send a message next time someome comes online,
> something had to be done to get to those people.
>
> I then watched IM users for the next couple weeks and felt that most
> non-savvy users I saw had a fairly small contact list.  It seemed
> reasonable to default Show Offline to yes, catering to the people who
> want things to Just Work.
>
> Based on the feedback seen.. and the fact that I, certainly, leave
> Show Offline off the vast majority of time.. reverting this sounds
> reasonable.

So it seems to me we need to increase the discovery of the "Hide  
Offline Contacts" option.

I definitely think that for very new users, showing offline contacts  
is the way to go, since they don't have as many buddies. But once your  
list has more than say, 30 people online at a time, showing oflfine  
conacts is cumbersome.

Do we want to move the "Show Offline Contacts" option into primary UI  
somewhere?

Maybe come up with a heuristic for that option as well -- if the  
initial accounts the user sets up have just a few contacts, show  
offline ones. If they have a lot, hide them. By default of course.

-Colin